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The long takes of Alejandro Inarritu's "Birdman" won out over the long production of Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" at the Directors Guild Awards Saturday. Both formally ambitious in very different ways, "Boyhood" and "Birdman" have been neck-in-neck throughout the awards race. But after dominating the acting and producing guild awards, Inarritu's tale about a washed-up actor looking for some authenticity on the New York stage appears to have the edge in the lead up to the Oscars. There are no sure things when it comes to Hollywood awards, but a DGA win at least makes Inarritu's ascent to Oscar dominance nearly inevitable. The...

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The long takes of Alejandro Inarritu's "Birdman" won out over the long production of Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" at the Directors Guild Awards Saturday.
Both formally ambitious in very different ways, "Boyhood" and...

Writer-director J.C. Chandor has made three good movies in a row, and they're his first three. He's a heartening exception to the usual percentages.
His first, "Margin Call," compressed an epoch's worth of financial meltdowns and ruinous...

It's a recent, blustery Chicago day, and Jonathan Glazer is tucking into a lovely steak at David Burke's Primehouse. In support of his arresting new film "Under the Skin," starring Scarlett Johansson as an alien being on the prowl in Glasgow and...

We're heading into Oscar-bait season for Hollywood, when the biggest movies tend to suck up all the oxygen. Just as worthy are the offerings from the local art house scene, which reliably features smaller films — indie features, classic films and...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Northwestern University’s Block Cinema will launch its winter film series on Jan. 23 with a documentary about Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights activism from the mid-1950s through 1968. Part of the University’s weeklong...

Among a fleet of documentaries launched on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy comes "Killing Kennedy," a dramatic take with Rob Lowe as the president and Will Rothhaar as Lee Harvey Oswald. Premiering Sunday on National...

In the last shot of Ben Affleck's "Argo" — relax, there are no spoilers here — the camera pans slowly along the shelves of toys in a young boy's bedroom. The year is 1980; the film spends most of its time on the true story of how a CIA operative...

While it's true that there's only so much anyone can say about the Oscars, remember it can be said again and again. As a reader (and writer), I know by now that there are 10 abiding Oscar stories. Here they are, all in a single article:
The history
...

A number of recent movies — including some of this year's top awards contenders — revive a decades-old debate about the type of director who shapes the most memorable films.
In his famed 1962 essay, "Notes on the Auteur Theory," Andrew Sarris...

A chronicle of the life of Bob Guccione, an examination of the bank robber who inspired “Dog Day Afternoon” and a painterly inquiry from the latter half of Penn & Teller are among the documentaries receiving the world-premiere treatment from the...

Do movie directors, like fine wines, get better with age? That may sound like a frivolous question, but it has long been debated by critics as they weigh the relative merits of fiery young upstarts versus wise old veterans. The question takes on renewed...

Elmore Leonard, the revered crime author who died Tuesday at age 87, was well known in Hollywood circles, either for his books that got adapted into films or for his own screenplays. But Leonard's most recent success had been on the small screen with...

Early in her career, Jacqueline Bisset discovered that she didn't need to be in every shot of a movie.
Bisset came to that realization while making Jerry Paris' underrated 1970 drama "The Grasshopper," which cast her as a wide-eyed...

NEW YORK — When screenwriter Steven Conrad was hired to write a draft of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" three years ago, he knew the degree of difficulty would be high. After all, over a development period of more than 15 years, about a...

Charlotte Rampling has gone from "The Look" to "The Legend."
She received the moniker "The Look" when as a beautiful, carefree dolly bird in swinging '60s London she made an early name for herself in Richard Lester's 1965...

Movie producer Dick Shepherd, whose credits include "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961), "The Fugitive Kind" (1960) and "Robin and Marian" (1976), probably saved one of the most popular film songs of all time.
After a test...

Direct from the age of black-and-white television, Reginald Rose's "12 Angry Men" has been redeployed to confront the issue of race relations.
This Pasadena Playhouse production, which opened Sunday under the direction of artistic director...

Given the depth and breadth of the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's body of work, it's difficult to even narrow down his top performances, let alone single out the best one. Would it be his Oscar-winning turn as "In Cold Blood" author...

David Rayfiel, a screenwriter and master script doctor who made his mark — often uncredited — on films by director Sydney Pollack that frequently featured Robert Redford, including "Three Days of the Condor," "The Way We Were" and...

Cliff Robertson, who starred as John F. Kennedy in a 1963 World War II drama and later won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a mentally disabled bakery janitor in the movie "Charly," died Saturday, one day after his 88th birthday. ...